China clamps down on Web access 20 years after bloody crackdown

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Chinese police officers walk past the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing on Wednesday. Foreign journalists were barred from Tiananmen Square on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy protests.

BEIJING — Police saturated Tiananmen Square with security on Thursday's 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activists, and an exiled protest leader was blocked from returning home to confront Chinese officials over what he called the "June 4 massacre."

Foreign journalists were barred from the vast square as both uniformed and plainclothes police fanned out across the plaza that had been the epicenter of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

The square was closed Wednesday for a welcoming ceremony for the prime minister of Malaysia and had not been reopened as of midnight. Tiananmen Square is usually closed only temporarily during important events such as the opening of the annual legislative session.

Authorities also shut down social-networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr, and authorities confined dissidents to their homes or forced them to leave Beijing, part of sweeping efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.

In a further sign of the government's unwavering hard-line stance toward the protests, the second most-wanted student leader from 1989 said he had been denied entry to the southern Chinese territory of Macau.

Wu'er Kaixi, who has been in exile since fleeing China after the crackdown, traveled to Macau on Wednesday to turn himself in to authorities in a bid to return home. Immigration officers pulled him aside and demanded he fly back to Taiwan, something he vowed to resist.

"I'm just waiting. I'm guessing they're waiting for instructions from their superiors," Wu'er told The Associated Press by phone, adding that he was being detained in a small room guarded by a lone official at the Macau airport's immigration offices.

"If they disagree with my behavior, they can arrest me. I can accept that," he said. "But I won't let them deport me."

Hunger striker
Wu'er rose to fame in 1989 as a pajama-clad hunger striker haranguing then-premier Li Peng at a televised meeting during the protests. Named No. 2 on the government's list of 21 most-wanted student leaders after the crackdown, he escaped and has lived in exile in the self-ruled island of Taiwan, where he has worked as a businessman and political commentator. An attempt to return home in 2004 was rebuffed when he was deported from the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Wu'er said in a statement issued through a friend that he wants to turn himself in to the Chinese authorities so he can visit his parents — who haven't been allowed to visit him in Taiwan — and engage the government in a public dialogue about Tiananmen through his court trial.

"When I turn myself in, I will use the platform of a Chinese courtroom to debate the Chinese government about this incident," he said.

"My turning myself in should not be interpreted as my admission that my behavior 20 years ago is illegal and wrong. I want to reassert here the Chinese government bears complete and undeniable moral, political and legal responsibility for the tragedy that happened in China in 1989," his statement said.

"I hope, 20 years later, the Chinese government can set a new position on the historical problem of the 'June 4 massacre,' admit its guilt and apologize to the Chinese people," he said.

The student leader who topped China's most-wanted list, Wang Dan, was jailed for seven years after the crackdown before being expelled to the United States in 1998. He was in Taiwan this week to attend commemorations there.

Foreign journalists barred
Beijing has never allowed an independent investigation into the military's crushing of the protests, in which possibly thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens were killed. Young Chinese know little about the events, having grown up in a generation that has largely eschewed politics in favor of nationalism and economic development.

There were no signs of attempts to mark the protests in mainland China, where the government squelches all discussion of the events.

As in past years, foreign media reports on issues related to the protests in print, on television or the Internet were blocked. Journalists trying to film on the square or interview dissidents in recent days have been detained for several hours on apparently trumped-up charges of creating disturbances, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.

Authorities have been tightening surveillance of China's dissident community ahead of the anniversary, with some leading writers already under close watch or house arrest for months.

Reining in dissidents
Ding Zilin, a retired professor and advocate for Tiananmen victims, said by telephone that a dozen officers blocked her and her husband from leaving their Beijing apartment Wednesday.

"They won't even allow me to go out and buy vegetables," said Ding, whose teenage son was killed in the crackdown. "They've been so ruthless to us that I am utterly infuriated," she said.

Another leading dissident voice, Bao Tong, was taken by police to southeastern China, said his son, Bao Pu.

Bao Tong, 76, is the former secretary to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy protesters.

All seven of the former student leaders on the original wanted list who remain in China were under surveillance and had been warned by police not to travel outside their home cities or accept media interviews, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Apart from Wu'er, those still on the list live in the United States and are barred from returning.

Web crackdownThe blocking of social-networking sites marked a new chapter in China's attempts to muzzle dissent and control information, showing the burgeoning influence of such technology among young Chinese.

Authorities targeted message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, along with Chinese mini-blogging site Fanfou and video sharing site VeryCD. Notices on their home pages said they would be closed through Saturday for "technical maintenance." The video site YouTube has been blocked in China since March.

Jason Khoury, spokesman for Yahoo, which owns Flickr, said no explanation had been given and the company believed the restrictions were "inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression." Officials from Twitter did not comment.

In Hong Kong, where the anniversary is openly commemorated, a second dissident who took part in the 1989 events was denied entry to the territory. U.S. Consulate General spokesman Dale Kreisher said the decision to deport Xiang Xiaoji, an American citizen, was "particularly regrettable in light of Hong Kong's well-known reputation as an open society."

Xiang had planned to attend Hong Kong's annual candlelight vigil for victims of the crackdown.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The lead-up to the Chinese government's bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown began with impromptu student demonstrations, that gained steam as Beijing mourned the death of former Chinese Communist Party leader and liberal reformer Hu Yaobang on April 22, 1989. Here a crowd on Tiananmen Square call for greater freedoms and condemn rampant inflation and corruption. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were later killed by China's military on June 3-4, 1989 as communist leaders ordered an end to six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests.
(Catherine Henriette / AFP - Getty Images)
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Wang Dan, center, a leading Chinese dissident during 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and member of the Beijing University students delegation, addresses foreign correspondents in Beijing on May 1, 1989.
(Catherine Henriette / AFP - Getty Images)
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Thousands of students from several Beijing universities march toward Tiananmen Square in the center of the Chinese capital on May 4, 1989.
(Sadayuki Mikami / AP)
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Demonstrating students surround policemen near Tiananmen Square on the afternoon of May 4, 1989.
(Sadayuki Mikami / ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang speaks with fasting university students in Tiananmen Square on May 19, 1989, urging them to call off their hunger strike, which was in its sixth day. Zhao was stripped of all government positions as a result of his conciliatory stance toward the protesters. He was placed under house arrest until his death in January 2005.
(Anonymous / AP)
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Students rest amid the debris on Tiananmen Square on May 28, 1989, as their strike for government reform entered its third week.
(Jeff Widener / Associated Press)
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Students and residents of Beijing gather in Tiananmen Square around a replica of New York's Statue of Liberty on May 30, 1989. The replica, which was called the Goddess of Democracy, was created by students from an art institute to support the pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government.
(Toshio Sakai / AFP - Getty Images)
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A dissident student yells for soldiers to go back home as crowds flood into central Beijing on June 3, 1989.
(Catherine Henriette / AFP - Getty Images)
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A young woman is caught between civilians and Chinese soldiers, who were trying to remove her from an assembly near the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 3, 1989.
(Jeff Widener / AP)
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Editor's note:
This image contains graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing.

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Beijing citizens gather around the body of a man who died when an armored personnel carrier on its way to Tiananmen Square crashed through a troop convoy that had been stopped by protesters, June 4, 1989.
(Mark Avery / Associated Press)
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A solitary young man facing down a column of People's Liberation Army tanks on June 5, 1989 would become the iconic image of the Tiananmen tragedy to the outside world. The man, calling for an end to the violence against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. The Chinese government crushed the student-led demonstration for democratic reform.
(Jeff Widener / AP)
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A Chinese couple on a bicycle take cover at an underpass as tanks deploy overhead in eastern Beijing on June 5, 1989.
(Liu Heung Shing / AP)
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People's Liberation Army tanks and soldiers guard the strategic Chang'an Avenue leading to Tiananmen Square on June 6, 1989, two days after the blooody crackdown on pro-democracy students. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were killed by China's military.
(Manuel Ceneta / AFP - Getty Images)
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Zhang Xianling, a member of the informal Tiananmen Mothers group, holds a portrait of her son Wang Nan at her Beijing home on May 31, 2009. Zhang says her son, then 19, headed out to Tiananmen Square around 11 p.m. on June 3, 1989, and was killed when troops entered the square to crush the student-led democracy protests. Zhang says she was only able to locate her son's body 10 days later.
(Diego Azubel / EPA)
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Tens of thousands of people attend a candlelight vigil at Hong Kong's Victoria park Thursday, June 4, 2009, to mark the 20th anniversary of the June 4th military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing.
(Vincent Yu / AP)
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Xiong Yan, one of the 21 most-wanted Tiananmen Square protesters holds a candle as he takes part in the candle light vigil to mark the 20th anniversary of the Beijing June 4th 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, in Hong Kong, China, 04 June 2009. Hong Kong is the only place in China where an event to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre can be held legally. Fearful of social unrest, the authorities in Beijing closed of the square to foreign journalists, and clamped down on social networking and photo-sharing websites such as Twitter and Flickr.
(Ym Yik / EPA)
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A plain cloth policemen, left, tries to stop a journalist from taking pictures while policemen check the passport of a tv cameraman outside Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, early on Thursday. As June 4 marks the 20-year-anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown authorities have raised the security level in that area to a maximum and denied access for western journalists.
(Oliver Weiken / EPA)
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A policemen (behind a curtain) checks a passport at the entrance of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, early 04 June 2009. As June 04 marks the 20-year-anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown authorities have raised the security level in that area to a maximum and denied access for western journalists.
(Oliver Weiken / EPA)
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Editor's note:
This image contains graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing.